Your favorite belly wood under boo???

[Aram]

What's your favorite? (If it's osage, then what's your second choice?    )A friend is building a bamboo backed bow. He's not settled on the belly wood yet. Local wood would be nice and we don't have osage in our area.  :(  Oak (white and red), hickory, mulberry, eastern red cedar, locust, elm, maple, walnut... NE kind of stuff.
He cut some laminations of elm that he had drying. Then had second thoughts mainly because of the weight of those logs. How is elm in compression? Weight? Would it's weight rob cast or is it acceptable?
Thanks in advance.

[Jake Fr]

i would use hickory but i'm not a fan of osage i got some ipe thats on one now and i realy like it so far

[NTD]

I love osage, but Ipe is close.

[fujimo]

osage, ipe, hickory, in that order- i love hickory, but it is also a bit tougher to work, very forgiving of tillering errors etc. my osage and ipe bows certianally have a bit more snap than my hickory bows, but maybe thats just mine- others will disagree i'm sure.

i have a good mate looking for some elm, would you guys like to sell a few staves, or trade or whatever- he would sure be grateful
regards
wayne

[vanillabear?]

[Hermann From Bavaria]

Massaranduba and Ipe.
But Massaranduba is horrible at tillering.

Greets
Herm

[Benner]

Osage, with Ipe a close second.

[JamesV]

IPE & Boo, can't get any better

[Jeremy]

Ipe... tough as nails and I can get it at the local hardware store.

If you're only looking at native woods, hickory will stand up the best to the boo; a good piece of mulberry would be nice too.

[xstatic1971]

Have been enjoying working with Ipe.  Not too expensive, beautiful dark color, super strong (broke some nails and drill bits in this stuff for other projects) and you can get it several places (like places that sell decking...)

Good stuff!  Looks great with Bamboo too.

Craig

[Loren Holland]

ditto...go with ipe.  I find it easily at decking supply stores.

I would be concerned about some of the other choices you mentioned under boo, compression wise. when you consider that ipe is strong enough to handle a glass backing, it is readily available, and provides such a great contrast, it is my personal favorite.

I have heard that hickory is too compression weak.  Now i did make a boo/hickory kids bow that is holding up so far, but no big bows.

[tradbower]

I have made a few with Jabota ( Brazilan Cherry)
 and have had no problems.

[Pat B]

Osage or ipe. I agree with Loren about compression weak woods. Bows can and have been made with boo back and hickory belly  but why not match up a tension strong backing like boo with a compression strong wood like ipe or osage.

[Aram]

WOW! Such an overwhelming vote for ipe... I might build one myself. I'm ashamed to say i haven't build a bow in three years or so.
Any tricks about working with ipe? I looked it up and it seems really heavy. Deep and narrow like an BBO? Is it greasy? does it need an acetone rub before gluing? Urac OK?
Thank you all. This is exciting. We'll post pictures when we start (second week in December, I think.)

Jeremy      Sorry I've been out of touch. We'll have to catch up someday. Aaaaargh, life!  

fujimo, I'll check. with. I think my friend got all his elm cut into boards but I might have some serviceable staves. They'll be plenty dry by now.   :rolleyes:   If I do you can have it for the shipping.

Thanks all again and let me know if  you have any tips on working ipe.

[NTD]

Sharp Scraper!  Exercise the wood a bunch between wood removal, Ipe can seem to not lose weight and then all of a sudden make a big drop, so go slow.  Keep the tips narrow as you dare.  Watch for the nasty splinters and work it in a well ventilated area.  

I've heard people degrease and not degrease.  I myself wipe it down with denatured alcohol before glue up.  URAC is fine to use.  Ipe can handle deep and narrow but it works fine flat bellied to.

Have fun and good luck.  I hate working Ipe but I sure do like the bow it makes.

[NTD]

Ipe can vary a bit too as there is 100 or so species of it.  Darker wood the better.  When selecting the board it may be hard to see grain, don't stress too much about that but do keep and eye out for knots.  A wet rag and some bright light will help as they can be hard to see.

[Loren Holland]

grain is hard to see, so look very closely. the darker wood is better. look close for the light green swirl pattern and avoid it, i don't know for sure what it is but the limb that broke on me was over that spot.

going slowly is so true...i started to think i couldn't make a bow above 45lbs for awhile, because it seemed like ipe just wouldn't bend and then all of the sudden bam, it was too light

it is so heavy, you can go scary tiny on the tips

i used to use TB3, because it was cheap and truthfully i was a little timid of making the epoxy jump..but urac works so much better with ipe and boo

also aesthetically, once you final sand, just wipe down the whole bow with golden oak. it darkens the ipe a bit, but not too much. the resultant brown/red and the golden glow on the bamboo is gorgeous under gloss or semi-gloss.

[John Cooper]

Originally posted by Hermann From Bavaria:
Massaranduba and Ipe.
But Massaranduba is horrible at tillering.

I've been working a lot with both lately and actually prefer massaranduba to work with.  It isn't as brutal on the tools and seems just as tough.  I was wondering why you came to these conclusions.  

On both, I've been wiping down with acetone and using resorcinol.

~John